


No way out but through

by zempasuchil



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-16
Updated: 2010-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:21:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zempasuchil/pseuds/zempasuchil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam, trapped alone while questing through Purgatory, prays to Castiel for help. Cas comes, and then his wings get stuck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No way out but through

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hwficjournal](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=hwficjournal).



It's dark, pitch dark. They've been crawling through this cave, or at least they think it's a cave, for what the glowing numbers on Sam's watch tell him is 32 minutes, 18 seconds. And counting. Who knows if watches work in Purgatory, anyway? It feels like hours. Pitch dark. Going neither up nor down, just twisting around outcroppings, shining his tiny Maglite and keeping track of Dean's shoes in front of him.

-

32 minutes and 18 seconds ago, they had followed this Djinn girl's spirit into her open grave.

"I'm dying," she'd said, laid up inside one of the buildings of a long-vacant coke processing plant near Calumet, Illinois. "It's probably indirectly your faults. But I owe you a favor, so listen up."

They dug her a pit right behind the building, the tree on the roof dropping leaves into it as it deepened, dropping on the ring of Sumerian words that Sam was copying carefully from the diagram Brigitta had drawn them in shaky hand. They carried her out – she could hardly walk, had lost her voice, and the curls of her tattoos were contracting, flickering, fading. Sam took out his knife and cut off two locks of her hair. One for him, one for Dean, to keep in their pockets.

They lowered her down gently into her grave, and knelt there by her side, and the sky above them grew dark. And then they waited.

Now, she breathed, and touched a spark to their temples, and it was her last breath.

Then she stood there next to them. "Oh good," she said. "It worked."

"You mean you didn't know what could've happened?" Dean said.

"Well I've never tried to take anyone with me into death before!"

Sam shrugged at Dean, and Dean relented. "Well?" said Sam.

"Through there." Brigitta pointed to where her body had lain. It was gone, and there in the earth there was a hole, big enough for them to drop through. Dean, still crouching, shone his flashlight down into it and said, "I can see the bottom. Not much of a drop."

"Underground?" Sam asked.

"No guide?" Dean asked. "Monsters don't get reapers?"

Brigitta huffed with amusement. "No. There's only one place for us to go; we don't need a guide."

Into the earth they went.

-

The way seems to change slowly but he notices it suddenly - the stone beneath his hands and knees turning softer, into earth, a mild relief to their bruised knees. Their path starts on a slight upwards incline, and - this is the strange part, because as far as they can tell they're still totally underground - the darkness starts letting up, slowly, slowly. Soon Sam can see further, Dean's calves, the vague half-imagined shape of him crawling in front, and beyond him occasionally the half-imagined shape of Brigitta, who leads their way.

 _How can we trust her?_ Dean whispered to him, back when Purgatory was only a whisper of a possibility. Sam looked over Dean's shoulder at the Djinn girl, who was watching them warily from her cot.

 _She's the best bet we've got._

Dean apparently compromised by watching her every move, which wasn't much of a compromise considering that Dean got a pretty good view of her ass as she led them onwards. Sam doesn't think about what he knows, that this really wasn't an easy decision for Dean to make, between watching her ass and bringing up the rear in order to watch Sam's - figuratively, of course. He's been overprotective since Sam got resouled. Not that he wasn't always.

-

At first they try making conversation, their voices echoing easily off the stone walls, but nobody is very good at explaining exactly where they are.

"It's not geography," Sam muses, "because that's specifically the earth. But we started on earth to get here, and just kind of traveled - sideways. Peri-geography?"

"I have no idea what language you're speaking," says Dean.

"Cas called it cosmology."

"Didn't he not really know about it, though?" says Dean. "It wasn't on any of his maps

"Actually," Brigitta says, "it's not mappable. Or, you can only map it if you can map dreams."

"What," Dean says, "are you serious?"

"Yeah, dreams. We go back to where we came from, right? So you get heaven and hell, your divine origin and your original sin, and we get human dreams."

"Oh," says Dean.

The caves are very quiet, with only the noise of their shuffling and the clear plink of water falling, drop by drop, somewhere else.

"Sorry," says Sam. "About our dreams."

Brigitta shrugs. "You can't apologize for my existence. Besides, we get our revenge."

"Yeah, and we get ours," says Dean. Sam groans.

"Look," says Brigitta sharply, "I didn't want to bring _you_ here. But if it's between you, heaven, and hell – we're at least related. And, you saved my life. You send most of _us_ here, to the afterlife. You killed my father, remember?"

"Sorry," says Sam again.

"You're not sorry," she says.

If Sam could see Dean's face he thinks they would be looking at each other nervously. But he can't, so they aren't, and instead Sam has to keep his nerves tucked under his skin and try not to think about how much longer they could be down here, on their hands and knees in the dark.

-

Now the ceiling above is a bit higher, nothing they could stand upright beneath, but things seem to be improving and Sam feels some great amount of relief wash over him. They're getting somewhere now. For all they knew, Purgatory just trapped you in the crawling dark forever. A higher ceiling and a less-dark dark, and things are looking up.

At 43 minutes, Sam notices the walls of earth around him are looking more distinct, like boards.

47, and they're not gritty mine-shaft posts, but vertical ones, rather clean-looking.

51: "This look like a crawlspace to you, Sam?"  
"Yeah."

53: "Is that insulation?"

One hour and Sam's starting to think they might just try punching a hole through the top, which is some insulation and some floorboards between rafters - they could be right underneath open air, right? They could be under a house, and they'd be free if they just break through –

With that, a board swings down between him and Dean, and rocky earth starts pouring in as Sam scrambles back away from the falling rocks, and Dean scrambles forward to keep his legs from getting buried. Speaking of breaking through, and Sam should hold his mental tongue, because apparently even when he keeps his thoughts to himself they get him in trouble.

"Sam!" Dean yells as the earth is still pouring, and Sam yells "Dean!" with a surge of terror, the newborn claustrophobia of someone suddenly facing the possibility that they'll be buried alive.

"What the fuck!" Dean yells, and Sam can hardly hear, so he pushes against the blockage with his feet, trying to shore it up, and shouts as loud as he can. "Find an exit!"

Some more sliding and rattling of rocks, then, silence. Utter silence.

" _Fuck_ ," Sam groans, and lies there breathing hard, hardly daring to move against the pile of rocks and debris.

-

For a while Sam screams Dean's name till his throat hurts, hoping maybe Dean can dig through without it collapsing more, or that they got out and are somewhere up above him, listening for signs of where to start pulling up boards or digging.

" _Dean,_ " he wrenches out, "Come on, Dean," and then, in a moment of desperation and dire straits indeed, "Come on, Cas." _Come on._ "I need your help. I'm buried alive in Purgatory and I need your help."

Silence, of course. What did he expect? Purgatory's not even on Castiel's map. Then. Then, the bulb in his Maglite explodes in sparks and a tiny dying flame, and he hears a thud in the dark.

"Cas?" he ventures.

"This is Purgatory?" Castiel groans. "No wonder I feel – _aagh_ –"

"Cas, what's wrong?" But already Sam hears a pop, a crackling, a roar, like setting a blowtorch to damp logs till they burst into flame, or pure radio static, snow on the television.

"Hide your eyes!" Castiel says, and just as the flash of light grows almost painfully bright Sam shields his eyes with his forearm and clenches them tight as he can.

Heat like the lick of flames is suddenly only warmth, then cool as snow, prickling, prickling the hairs along his arms like static, and Sam is bowled over as something, a gust of wind, maybe another cave-in, knocks against him.

"Cas!" he yells, afraid to speak but shouting out of reflex. "What's going on?"

"Don't look!" Castiel says, sounding alarmed, pained. "I had no idea this would happen."

"What?" Sam's arm is still clamped close to his eyes.

"My wings."

 _Wings._ What. Of course. "Wings? Aren't those only when… when you're dead?"

Castiel sighs, then gasps, and Sam is weighed down by a huge prickly blanket. "It's Purgatory. Not quite heaven, or hell, but not your world either. And… and I'm stuck. My wings have manifested partially here. It's a miracle you've withstood them even in this half-formed state."

"Oh. I guess Purgatory is sort of an ontological difficulty for you now, isn't it? If you don't even have it on your maps. I'm pretty sure _I'm_ only here metaphysically."

"Hm. We can't be sure exactly how much you are here. And I can't go find your bodies to ascertain this, because –" he grunts, and Sam can hear him twisting maybe. "Because I'm stuck." The tone in his voice says that this is not open for debate.

"Oh, great," Sam groans. "I don't mean to be ungrateful here, Cas. Really, thanks for coming. I didn't really expect you to, considering – well it's moot, because now we're _both_ stuck. There's been a cave-in. I think Dean and the Djinn girl we followed are alive and either finding us or finding a way out. Are you all right?"

"I'm trapped in an enclosed space with my wings pinned. I don't think that fits your definition of 'all right'."

"I mean are you hurt – is there anything I can do?" All the noises Castiel is making are making Sam extremely curious and a little uncomfortable.

"It's unlikely."

"Can I at least open my eyes, since I haven't been annihilated yet?"

"No."

Sam groans.

"You can take your arm away, but, Sam, it is imperative that you _keep your eyes closed._ "

"Thanks," Sam says, and he can see the red insides of his eyelids now, meaning there's some sort of light – but then it goes out – and then comes back. Something rough knocks into him and he grabs it, feeling the scales slick but hard under his fingers. Cas hisses. "Are these…"

"Yes."

"They keep changing?"

"… Yes." Castiel makes a strangled noise. "This small space is extremely uncomfortable."

"Yeah, well you weren't on your hands and knees crawling through it for an hour," Sam grumbles, and the scales beneath his hand turn wet, slippery. He holds on.

"Perhaps you can help," Castiel says. "So long as you –"

"Keep my eyes closed, yeah, I get it."

From what he hypothesizes (because hypothesizing is not scratching an itch, he reasons, but caking the wall with layers of plaster, right?), this may not be very different from hell. Pinned by pinioned wings. Tight spaces, great heat or great cold. All dark but the merest light is pain, so don't open your eyes, you'll go blind.

"But," Sam says, trying to wiggle out from under a beating leathery weight, "if these aren't my physical eyes, how come I still can't look?"

"Do you want to burn your metaphysical eyes?" Castiel snaps.

"I don't even know what that's supposed to mean," Sam says, and grabs at something that hisses when he touches it. Cas hisses too, and Sam squirms.

-

Apparently what Castiel needs is for Sam to grapple with his wings and attempt to extract them from the thin air around them. And Sam has to do this blind, crouched over Cas in the narrow crawlspace.

Cas's hands move his body, not by the shoulders like Samuel would or by the arms like Dean, but one hand on his bicep, one at his waist, then on the flat of his back, his hip pressing him sideways, his stomach – Sam jerks away, suddenly sweating and breathing hard. _Shit._

"I'm not going to hurt you, Sam."

"Sorry," Sam says, and immediately frowns at himself for fucking apologizing. "It's just – the soul thing."

"What?" says Castiel, and Sam can picture the narrowing eyes, head beginning to tilt. "I am not going to touch your soul. It's extremely volatile."

"I know that." Sam shivers. "It's just muscle memory."

Castiel keeps his hand on Sam's shoulder, close to his neck. Sam can feel his grip, hard but not too tight, the thumb pressed next to a vein above his collarbone so Sam can feel it pulse against, can feel his heartrate slowing, his breathing calming.

Sam finally moves back behind Castiel, under the short ceiling practically draping himself over Cas's shoulders, pressed up against his wings, against his back.

"Okay," he says, and plunges his arms into the whirlwind.

-

Sam can't hardly get a grip on anything, though. They're snakes one minute and they're flames the next. Castiel can't help – it has something to do with how his entirety occupies the same space as his wings and so he can't bring them to Sam's plane of interaction, or something. All he can do is make strange uncomfortable noises and grit out difficult instructions to Sam, who hardly knows what direction he's reaching in. The best he can do is wrestle down the wings he's clutching in both hands and wrapping his arms around. He's got two for sure, but they're still beating and snapping the air around him.

"Cas," he pants, "how many wings do you _have?_ "

"It depends." Castiel also sounds short of breath, as well as terse, which is a difficult feat.

"Really?" Sam's voice cracks, and at least that's one small grace of Dean not being here: he doesn't have to put up with the emasculation.

"That's the problem, reality. I have more or less the number of wings an archangel has."

"Which is…?"

"Depends. _Nngh_." Castiel twists and Sam grabs him, wraps his right arm around his waist, pinning the hot wings against Castiel's back, keeping them from escaping. "Ah – _ah_."

"Sorry," Sam says, his mouth brushing Castiel's hair, and he feels Castiel quivering under him, practically vibrating. It goes straight to Sam's dick.

"Sorry," he says again, twitching away, because it sure figures that Cas would watch porn and probably get ideas about this when really, it was really –

He feels Castiel's head press back against his shoulder, feels a hand run through his hair, down to the short ones on the nape of his neck, and twine in there, twist, pull – and it's Sam's turn to make a little choking noise in this throat, to twist his own fingers in Cas's shirt.

"What're you –"

"Ask me how it feels, Sam."

"What?" He clenches his eyes shut, afraid he might forget with all this distraction. Under his arm, Castiel twists again, and Sam can feel the muscles shift under the shirt he's pulled so taught.

"How it feels, when you touch my wings."

"Oh." _Shit,_ he thinks, but he's too far gone for alarm. Wildly, Sam grasps at the bundle of wings he's holding with his left hand, digs his fingers into the ribbony feathers and the stiff ones, into the down and the foam and underneath to the hot sinew, the veins pumping near the surface, the vines writhing beneath the leaves. Castiel lets out a broken moan and tips his head back onto Sam's shoulder, and Sam feels his other hand scrabbling against his knee for purchase, slipping up his thigh.

"H-how does it – fuck, Cas," and Sam gives up and bends his head down, breathes down Castiel's neck. Presses his open mouth to the skin there, mouths at the flowing silk that's billowing against his cheek, teeth scraping against the knot. Feels Cas's body shake at it. Pushes his knee into Cas's palm, nudges under, and when Cas slides his hand up Sam's thigh Sam buries his face in Castiel's neck and groans into it, low and vibrating.

"Sam," Cas says, "please," and Sam doesn't need to be told twice. He untangles his hand from the shirt and smooths it down Castiel's belly, down under the waistband of his slacks, and Cas pushes into Sam's hand, keening with need.

-

It takes a while longer than they thought to extract all of Castiel's wings, and by the time Sam does he's sore everywhere. Castiel probably is too.

"You going to beam us out of here, then?" Sam asks.

"Assuming I can still move like that in this world, yes."

Sam groans. "Just, do what you can, okay? I'm exhausted." He leans back against the wall and covers his eyes with his arm again, finally unclenching his eyelids.

Castiel's hands are on him again, and he leans into their solid, smooth touch. On his waist, cradling his chin, Cas's mouth on his pulse – "I've got it," Castiel says, and even though they are in Purgatory, even though they are still underground, even though they are still utterly mapless, it's enough to make Sam relax.


End file.
